Toleration, Skepticism, and Blasphemy: John Locke, Jonas Proast, and Charlie Hebdo

Abstract

As the recent Charlie Hebdo, Copenhagen café, and Garland, Texas, shootings show, religion has recently reemerged as a source of violence within liberal democracies, particularly in those instances where cases of alleged blasphemy are involved. Although toleration arose, within the liberal tradition, as a means of dealing with such conflict, some individuals, possessed of devout religious belief, when confronted with beliefs or practices profoundly at odds with their faith, cannot conceive of toleration as a possibility. In such situations, the demand that these individuals tolerate that to which their faith is at odds is likely to run up against a more personal and, for its adherents, eternal agenda. This article considers a way in which those with devout religious beliefs might tolerate that which is profoundly at odds with their faith, thereby providing a means to avoid violent outcomes such as those in the "extreme cases" above.

Toleration and prejudice‐reduction: Two ways of improving intergroup relations

“…What makes a cultural, religious, or ideological belief critical and psychologically meaningful is that it is taken to be true (Crane, ). Devout believers, for instance, cannot be expected to accept the equal value of other belief systems (Tate, ).…”

‘And part not with my revelations for a trifling price’: Reconceptualizing Islam’s Aniconism through the lenses of reification and representation as meaning-making

“…Efforts to theorize about blasphemy and liberalism, acceptable forms of expression, and visual depictions of the sacred within Islam continue to garner immense interdisciplinary interest Dunkel and Hillard, 2014;Joppke 2014;March, 2011;Sturges, 2015;Tate, 2016). Demeaning images of the Prophet Mohammed published by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in 2005 caused global outrage.…”

“…There exists a notable lacuna in the recent literature related to this matter. Western scholarship on Islam and visual representations has primarily been issue-based, focusing on blasphemy laws (Sturges, 2015), toleration/integration (Joppke, 2014;Tate, 2016), cultural imperialism , or individual/group responses to sacred or blasphemous imagery (Dunkel and Hillard, 2014;March, 2011). There have not been any serious efforts to conceptualize Islam's aniconism more broadly through the lenses of any recognizable, non-theological philosophical frameworks.…”